Family says man killed in Tuesday crash was turning his life around

ROTHSCHILD – Matt Chaignot’s friends and loved ones believed he had turned his life around.

The 27-year-old Rothschild man had been working overtime at his job in the foundry department at Marathon Electric, paying off bills and socking away money for the wedding he and his fiancee, Stacey Kyle, 25, were planning.

He had bought a new car, his beloved Lincoln Navigator, that allowed him to haul his young family around in style. He hadn’t had a brush with the law in almost a year, and he and Kyle had just bought a tidy, red ranch house in which they planned to raise his two daughters and build a life together.

It all came crashing apart when the phone rang Tuesday. He was the man inside the SUV pulled from the waters beneath the Schofield dam, the apparent victim of a crash that began when he skidded off Grand Avenue early Tuesday and into the channel where Lake Wausau and the Eau Claire River converge.

“I would never think I should be planning a funeral,” Kyle said during a Friday interview in the home she and Chaignot shared. “I should be planning my wedding.”

No one knows exactly how or why Chaignot’s life ended the way it did. Police said they still were trying to piece together his final hours to determine where he had been, who he had been with and whether his Navigator was the same one involved in a hit-and-run Tuesday morning, prior to the fatal crash.

Had he been drinking, as so many victims of crashes in the wee hours of the morning have been? Was he rushing to get home from his job and to see his family? Did something else happen?

As his family was, like police, seeking answers to those questions, they also were mourning the man they remember as a prankster and perfectionist, who was always eager to whip out the pictures of his girls from his wallet, and who they think had turned a corner.

“He wanted people to see that he was trying,” his mother Pam Hendrickson, 45, said.

Days later, Kyle still does not know what happened in the final moments of her fiance’s life. On Friday afternoon, Kyle was composed and fought back tears while picturing the smile on his face when he played with his daughters.

Planning for the future

Chaignot was working hard in the foundry at Marathon Electric to help support the family and make good on his debts, Kyle said.

“He was trying to make our lives easier, get our bills paid off,” she said.

Family was everything for the couple that had been together almost four years. Chaignot often took his daughters on trips to the zoo in Milwaukee and Minocqua and he spent hours shopping for a perfect pair of shoes if one of them needed them. When they first met in 2010, Kyle said she and Matt spent much of their time together with his now 4½-year-old daughter, Serenity.

“He wanted to spend all the time in the world with her,” she said.

The couple had been looking forward to a Halloween wedding, in honor of their favorite holiday. Chaignot had a passion for horror movies and Halloween costumes that dated back to his boyhood years, his mother said.

The couple were considering adding children to their family, in addition to Serenity and Liana, the 1½-year-old daughter they share. He had talked about starting to landscape their new home and had purchased the Navigator just about two months ago, Kyle said.

“That car was like another baby for him,” she said.

A rough exterior

Chaignot had a troubled past, and people close to him attribute his run-ins with the law and other issues to different things.

His father, Kenneth Chaignot, said his son might have had a drinking problem and had attended recovery meetings with him a few years ago. Hendrickson and Kyle, though, said Matt’s mental health problems, primarily anxiety and an obsessive-compulsive disorder, were what led to his problems, mostly involving fights and disorderly conduct charges.

Whatever the cause of his past troubles, his loved ones are convinced he was turning his life around. Matt Chaignot’s tattoos and rough exterior were not indicative of who he was inside, they said.

“He was a good kid,” Kenneth Chaignot said. “He was doing really good.”

Though he still would go out with friends for a few drinks, Kyle said he usually did not during the week.

“He was trying to start a new life,” Kyle said.

Tuesday’s events

Kyle was at work at UMR, an insurance company in Wausau, at about 2 p.m. when she heard about the crash. Her mother, who works with her, drove her to the scene, but not before the two got stuck in the traffic jam created when police shut down one lane of southbound Grand Avenue during their investigation.

Hendrickson and Kyle are focused now on getting through each day and helping the girls remember their dad. They had to pick out clothes for Matt Chaignot to wear at the funeral along with other preparations. Other family members set up a memorial next to the bridge Wednesday that was supplied with fresh red roses Friday afternoon.

Other than that, they are waiting for police to end their investigation and tell them what they think happened.